For those unfamiliar, the HRE stands for Holy Roman Empire. I could be grossly oversimplifying things, but my impression of history is that despite the attempts of a few rulers, the HRE was never as centralized as other Absolute Monarchies, basically, even though Emperors could be very powerful, their word wasn't law and they still had to politically balance themselves with other great houses.

This reminds me of how the Emperor played House Atreides and Harkonen against each other using a bid to maintain his power.

Even the Landsraad reminds me of the Imperial Diets.

Did Herbert where explicitly say what inspired the political framework of the Corrino Empire or are these connections coincidental at best?